Blandness is really insidious in The Minus Man, the making of which was like a sex act, as writer-
director Hampton Fancher admitted at the premiere. (Typically, he refused to elaborate.) Some felt screwed by the flick's vagueness and slow pacing, but I enjoyed its eerie, culty quality. Fuck me, Minus Man!

Minus a man, the all-girl band Lunachicks played at Life, the lead singer Theo thrashing about the stage in a hospital gown and neck brace she never fully
explained. I almost ended up in the same outfit thanks to the spastic gyrations of the wildcat next to me-these kids today!-and had to race for the exit, thereby missing the climactic moment when Theo threw up fake blood. Fuck you, mosher man! Meanwhile, crooner chick Brenda Bergman interviews Downtown performers on kewn.com and in the process volunteers her wacky takes on the L.A. personalities who make her toss. Says Brenda about Whoopi Goldberg, "What she really needs is to drop off the cliff, get really fucking poor, go back to the Public Theater, feel reality, and get back Whoopi instead of WHOOPI!" As for Whoopi's Comic Relief costar Robin Williams, Brenda refers to Jakob the Liar as Patch Goldstein and says, "Just the poster is torture. No, please, Robin, don't find wonder in the ashes coming out of the gas chambers! Please, don't!"

Finally, Bruce Vilanch, the L.A. gay blade and Hollywood Square who's written one-liners for Whoopi and Williams, was feted at Lips for his movie Unzipped-I mean Get Bruce!-and told me he's wildly looking forward to Jakob the Liar. Vilanch the schmoozer also divulged a line that almost made it into the recent Emmy Awards patter he wrote. "If Leelee Sobieski won for Joan of Arc," Vilanch related, "David Hyde Pierce was going to say, 'You go, girl! You're on fire!' But Helen Mirren won, and we had no Ayn Rand material."

Taking their glamour addictions seriously: an Angeleno magazine party in L.A.

Neither do I, but I do have five words for that straight actor: West Village gym steam room.